This invention relates to forage blowers such as used in farming installations for loading forage into silos and other similar applications.
Forage blowers are well known in the art. They are used for loading feed material into silos directly from farm wagons, and currently, numerous manufactures produce forage blowers according to different designs. Such known designs always use a large ventilator within a cylindrical housing having a tangential spout through which blown forage is discharged, and at the end of the spout a relatively long cylindrical conduit conveys the blown forage to the top end of the silos or other forage receiving installations.
During recent years various attempts have been made in order to improve the efficiency of forage blowers in order to limit the power requirement of forage blowers, which power is normally obtained from a conventional farm tractor coupled to the blower. These various attempts however have resulted in relatively complex forge blower designs which increases the manufacturing cost thereof and the maintenance requirements. Examples of such attempts are found in the following U.S. patents:
U.S. Pat. No. 3,175,867 entitled PERIPHERAL FEED BLOWER dated Mar. 30, 1965, A. S. Fenster et al, U.S. Pat. No. 3,466,095 entitled BLOWER TYPE MATERIAL FEEDER dated Sept. 9, 1969, Water N. Weihmuller, U.S. Pat. No. 3,594,047 dated July 20, 1971, entitled FEED-MATERIAL-HANDLING APPARATUS, Richard A. Pucher, U.S. Pat. No. 3,724,908 dated Apr. 3, 1973 entitled FEED MATERIAL HANDLING APPARATUS, Burrough et al and Canadian Pat. No. 769,624 dated Oct. 17, 1967 entitled DIAGONAL FEED MATERIAL CONVEYOR AND BLOWER MECHANISM, Scarnato et al and what appears to be its counterpart U.S. Pat. No. 3,302,978 dated Feb. 7, 1967.
Other prior art patents are as follows: U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,154,349 dated Oct. 27, 1964; U.S. Pat. No. 3,175,867 Mar. 30, 1965; U.S. Pat. No. 3,271,082 Sept. 6, 1966; U.S. Pat. No. 3,306,673 Feb. 28, 1967; U.S. Pat. No. 3,328,090 June 27, 1967; U.S. Pat. No. 3,843,280 Oct. 22, 1974; U.S. Pat. No. 3,867,064 Feb. 18, 1975; U.S. Pat. No. 3,968,997 July 13, 1976 and Canadian Pat. No. 993919 July 27, 1976 and No. 993920 of the same date.